Application of image processing technology for unloading automation of robot combine harvester

Automation of agricultural work has been expected to solve several problems of Japan's agriculture and help farmers. Now it is becoming a key to keep sustainability of national agricultural production. Thus we are now trying to develop a robot combine harvester. Attempts have been made to develop robot combine harvester. Although a few prototypes can run and automatically harvest rice and wheat, unloading work, in which grains are unloaded through harvester's auger into a grain container on a truck, has not yet been automated. In this paper, a method using machine vision is presented to position the harvester's spout at an appropriate point. Experimental results show that this method has sufficient accuracy.